washateria AmE , also: washeteria

Two women stood outside a washateria, smoking and comparing pregnancies.

And right now a carload of Kansas City police were on their way to the Washateria.

The four of them went over to the line of plastic contour chairs against the Washateria's cinderblock wall and sat there, not talking.

Ben had been right: the hot sunlight slanting in through the Washateria's dirty windows reflected off bright lines of tears on her cheeks.

It was early, not yet nine, and Perry was the first customer at the Washateria, a self-service laundry.

Why, instead of finding one dead man in the Turtle Bay Washateria, whoever happened in there first would have found three.

The first washateria so named was opened in 1936 in Fort Worth, Texas by Noah Brannen.

Innocent yachtsmen, caught doing their laundry late, found themselves backed against washateria walls, bracketed by spotlights, with microphones threatening their dental work.

It fills the abandoned Washateria with a glare brighter than the flash of the cheapie Polaroid, and unlike the Polaroid, it's constant.

I used to see him at the Costello Avenue Market sometimes,' Mrs Kersh said, 'and at the Washateria before they closed it.

Her parents, the late Concetta and Thomas Fertitta, lived in Beaumont, where her father managed two laundries known as Fertitta's Washateria.

Bev found a paper shopping bag to put the bloody rags in, and the four of them went down to the Kleen-Kloze Washateria on the corner of Main and Cony Streets.

The Norge Washateria in the shopping center was closed, it being impossible to run a coin-op laundry without electricity, but both the Bridgton Pharmacy and the Federal Foods Supermarket were open.

Ironically, he had met Mark Jackson in a washateria in the block that separated their houses, and it was there that the cop and the English professor still had their most interesting conversations.

In addition to other businesses already established, June Benton had a livery stable that covered all the lots from the present Muncy Building to the washateria, and was busy renting buggies and teams.

To make matters worse, Midnight has never been a particularly newsworthy town; in fact, the only major story in recent memory was a shoot-out inside the Tidy Washateria in which two Midnight residents shot each other and disabled three dryers.

He walked on, carrying the flowers, unaware that the two women outside the washateria had stopped talking for a moment and had watched him wistfully as he walked by with his paper of tea roses; their days of receiving flowers were long over.

She realized with sudden shock that she was standing outside of the Kleen-Kloze Washateria, where she and Stan Uris and Ben and Eddie had taken the rags that day in late June - rags stained with blood which only they could see.

Lessons of Harold Hudson His story resonates with me because of his great-uncle Harold, whom I first met as a young boy, around 1960, when I was young and naive enough to believe that the "Whites Only" sign at the washateria referred to the color of laundry, not the color of skin.